Nutritional status and perioperative fasting time versus complications and hospital stay of surgical patients

Introduction: many factors can have a negative influence over surgical results, such as a compromised nutritional status and the extension of the perioperative fasting time. Objective: to evaluate the influence of the nutritional status and the perioperative fasting time over the occurrence of surgical complications and over hospital stay, in patients who have undergone surgery of the gastrointestinal tract and/or abdominal wall, and who were subjected to a nutritional care protocol. Methods: cohort study, conducted with 84 patients, from June to November 2014. Data collection was performed by applying a structured questionnaire, search over the records and medical and/or nutritional prescription. Statistical analysis was performed using STATA/SE 12.0 and significance level of 5%. Results: nutritional risk was present in 26.2%, and from these 45.4% carried out preoperative nutritional therapy, having an average of 6.6 +/- 2.79 days. The preoperative fasting was 4.5 (3.66; 5.50) hours and the postoperative fasting 5.1 (2.5; 20.5) hours. No associations were found between the parameters for assessing body composition and the presence of complications. A negative correlation was observed between the length of hospital stay and the BMI (p = 0.017),while a positive correlation was observed between weight loss and the length of hospital stay (p = 0.036). Patients with higher postoperative fasting time had a higher occurrence of complications (p = 0.021). Conclusion: the compromised nutritional status and the extension of perioperative fasting time are associated with the occurrence of surgical complications and increased length of hospital stay.